Where Secrets Lie

Part 2 of the short story series, The Well of Images.

It
had been a sight unlike any Hope Emerson had ever seen, frightening yet
fascinating. In a place more real than a dream, she had stood before an open
door, a dark-tinted rippling liquid mirror, casting an image of her third eye
that danced and warped around a central locus. Eighteen years of fantasy novels
and video games had not prepared her to stand before such a sight.

Now
she stood in the delving room in Shelley Hall at Athens University, watching
Samuel Locke, her fellow student and the only person she knew of who could
explore that place with her, walk out the door as if the discovery of a magical
world was nothing more than a curiosity to tug at one’s attention for a moment and then be forgotten.

“Well,” the voice of Professor Eli
Berkeley broke through her thoughts. “What about you?”

Hope
jumped at the sound. Eli stood a few feet away, his hand resting on the desk
behind him. “About me?” she said.

“How would you like to learn about
Knowledge Tree and the study of the Unconscious Realms?”

A
smile tried to sneak onto her face, and she let it succeed. There was no reason
that someone else’s indifference should dampen her
own excitement. “Definitely. Tell me everything.”

“Okay, come with me.” Eli led her
through the door and down the hall, explaining as they walked. “The Unconscious
Realms are a literal manifestation of the collective unconscious.”

“The ideas within our minds that
exist there because we’re human,” Hope said. The collective unconscious as
theorized by Carl Jung had been the topic of Eli’s class for the first two
weeks. It was supposed to have been metaphorical, not so much collective as
similar, but the existence of the Unconscious Realms seemed to suggest
otherwise.

“That’s right. The
Realms are created from humanity’s perceptions and beliefs. While delving
through them, you might meet manifestations of mythical archetypes, like the
Hero or the Wise Old Man.”

They
entered a room that looked like part office and part lounge. A pair of
bookshelves stood against the walls, holding titles like The Origin of the World’s Mythologies and The
Hero with a Thousand Faces. Two students sat, one at a coffee table hunched
over a haphazard pile of papers, pushing them around and making notes with a
pencil, and the other at a desk, tapping away at a computer keyboard.

“These are Harriet and Pascal Wolfe,”
Eli said.

The
one leaning over the table looked up, revealing a feminine face. “People call us Hattie and Skull.”

“We’re twins,” the other said
without turning around, the clicking sound of keys not slowing.

“They’re my research assistants,” Eli
said. “Much of our theoretical knowledge of the Unconscious Realms is due to
these two.”

Hattie
struck her pencil across the page with a scratch.
“What we really want is to figure
out how to become delvers. That’s what keeps us working late.”

At
last, some peers who shared her interest. Maybe she could help them. “I get there by clearing my mind and imagining myself
outside of my body,” Hope said.

Hattie
made a face. “We know that, but it doesn’t work
for us. So . . .” She reached beside her chair and produced a clipboard with
several papers attached. “Here, sign this.”

Eli
held a hand forward, a look of frustration on his face. “Hattie . . .”

Hope
took the clipboard and lifted a few of the pages. They were all covered in
dense text. “What’s this?”

“Medical tests we want to do on you
while you’re under,” Hattie said, “to figure out why you can delve and we can’t.”

Eli
gently took it from her hand. “You don’t
have to sign that. My students can get a bit zealous.” He handed the clipboard
back to Hattie, who stuck out her lower lip. Eli continued. “If we wish to
conduct experiments on you, we’ll ask you about each one individually.”

“Oh come on,” Hattie said. “You were
supposed to be rendered speechless by my boldness until she signed it.”

Hope
did not know what to make of the twins. Hattie seemed uncaring toward her,
almost hostile. Skull had not once turned from his laptop, which either meant
he was snubbing her, or didn’t care for
the game of social graces.

“So,” Eli said, “how about it, would
you like to join them? Become my third research assistant?”

Hope
perked up, looking at him with wide eyes, a grin spreading across her face,
despite her first impression of her partners-to-be. “Yes,” she said, “I would. Can I start now?”

“Sure,” Eli said. “Skull, why don’t
you show her the basics of phenomenal construction theory.”

“Wait,” Hope said, “I thought I was
going to be delving.”

“That’s the hope,” Eli replied, “but
it’s not safe to do alone. It would have been nice if Samuel had decided to
join us, but,” he shrugged, “it’s his own choice. You’ll have to wait until we
find another delver to go with you.”

Hope
felt like the floor had just dropped out from under her. “But we have no idea how long that could be. It might be
years!”

“I’m sorry. The Realms are not like
dreams; if you were to get hurt, it might have some negative effect in real
life.”

“I’ll be extra careful.” She
continued protesting, but Eli would not give in. Eventually, she had to
concede. There would be no exploration of the Unconscious Realms without at
least one other person.

She
tried to study under Skull, but had trouble concentrating, and left after half
an hour. Back in her dorm room, Hope glanced at the copy of Final Fantasy XV
lying on her desk, still in its plastic wrapping, before flopping onto her back
in her bed. A video game might take the edge off her mind, but she was not in
the mood to enjoy it. Closing her eyes, she pictured the white ruin of the
dreamscape and her third eye in the mirror. A world of mind created by humanity’s collective unconscious. Was that possible? Did it even
make sense?

Suddenly,
she realized she was in the pre-delving state, on the brink of separating mind
and body. As if a switch had been thrown in her brain, Hope made a decision.
Putting her thoughts aside, she focused on that mind-body separation, willing
it to happen, feeling her senses slip away, as if they belonged to somebody
else.

As
usual, her eyes opened to the now familiar scene of the boughs and green
foliage of the lone tree on the hilltop. She stood, feeling not the
sluggishness of climbing out of bed, but the soreness of skin and muscle newly
free from being pinched between her bones and the ground, as if she had been
lying there on that hilltop for hours. A cool breeze caused strands of hair to
tickle her cheeks and temples.

Before
her lay the white stone and brick of a place so run down she could not tell
where the buildings began and ended. The layout made no sense to her, pillars,
arches, and walls standing or lying broken haphazardly, as if they had been
placed by a child toying with a sandbox computer game. Hope wondered who had
lived here, and what catastrophe could have made stone structures crumble like
this.

The
body-sized oval mirror with the ornate golden rim was where she remembered. It
seemed so out of place, polished to a shine and completely untouched among the
crumbling stone. Her reflection’s third eye
stared eerily back at her, moving with her other two eyes when she looked from
side to side. Standing there, gazing at this manifested impossibility, she felt
something intense stirring in her chest, fueled by the air she breathed. It was
strange, stronger than anything she had felt before, yet familiar. Something
like awe mixed with an almost-panic, combined with a disconnect between what
her eyes saw and what she felt could be real.

Overcome
with energy, she whirled around to gaze past the ruins and down the hill to the
forest beyond. The world was hers to discover, and she felt like a child with a
make-believe sword braving the backyard woods for the first time. But no, she
couldn’t. Eli, her professor turned
advisor, had told her not to come here alone, that it might be dangerous.
Though nothing about this place felt especially unsafe, she had no reason to
dismiss his concern. The Realms might be as safe as dreams, but they just as
easily might be as dangerous as the wilderness.

A
wave of resignation washed over her as she unclenched her heart and let the
prize go. She took a last look at the ruins, the mossy grass, and the forest in
the distance, before raising her hand to her third eye to wake herself up. She
would return soon, with a partner. If Samuel was the only other person who
could reach the Unconscious Realms, Hope would talk to him and persuade him to
come with her.

In
Eli’s class later that week, Hope’s
eyes kept drawing back to Samuel, who sat several seats over. He spoke little
and kept rolling the tips of his first two fingers against his desk, the joints
closest to the ends popping forward and backward. The class period seemed to
last an eternity. Hope kept glancing at the clock expectantly, only to find a
mere minute or two had passed each time.

At
last, class finished. Hope picked up her backpack and followed Samuel into the
hall. She called out to him, and he looked over his shoulder. When he saw her
he stopped. After a moment, he looked forward again, his shoulders sagging a
little, and then he turned around, leaning against the wall so that others
would have room to walk past.

He
looked at her expectantly, so she took a breath and began. “About what happened a few days ago . . .”

After
a moment, Samuel dropped his gaze. “Yeah.”
From his ensuing silence, Hope started to think she might have to prompt him
again, but then he looked up. “I’ve been thinking about dropping the class.”

“Really?” The thought had not
entered Hope’s mind. Did the whole business of the Unconscious Realms upset him
so much that he couldn’t deal with having Eli as a professor, or did he just
not care for Mythological Studies?

Hope
noticed he was fidgeting, running his short-clipped thumbnail over the tips of
the first two fingers of his right hand. A hunch took root in her mind, and she
decided to act on it. “And yet . . .”

Samuel
met her eyes. “And yet what?”

“And yet you still came to class
today. You seem like the kind of guy who doesn’t waste time. Could there be a
reason you’re hesitating to drop it?”

“What are you talking about?” Samuel
said.

She
pointed to his hand, the one he would not stop fidgeting with. “You hurt yourself while we were there. I saw it, black like
some kind of chemical burn. But it’s still bothering you out here.”

“What, that?” Samuel said, biting
his lip. “It’s nothing. Just a ghost feeling, like when you have a dream where
you have a sore, and then you wake up and scratch the place where the sore was
even though it’s not actually there, and then it gets irritated because you
scratched it.”

Hope
raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

“Of course.” Samuel turned back in
the direction of the door, and Hope felt the pit of her stomach sinking. “I’ve
got somewhere I need to be.”

The
next morning, Hope checked her e-mail as part of her new morning routine. Next
to the campus newsletter was a message from Samuel. Do you have time to talk at 3:50 today in front of the library?

On
impulse, she clapped her hands together above her head and cried, “Yes!” She could only hope that this meant he had
reconsidered the legitimacy of the Realms.

She
spent the morning and afternoon invigorated. At the appointed time, she made
her way to the lawn in front of the library, where Samuel sat in a bench,
reading. He looked up when she approached.

“Hi,” Hope said. She sat down on the
grass across from him. “You wanted to talk?”

“Yeah.” Samuel marked his place and
put the book aside clicking his fingers on it, and not looking at her. “I
thought about what you said, about my hand.”

So
she had been on to something. “And?”

“I went back to the Realm, or
whatever it is, and I’m . . . I think it might be possible that it is not just
a dream.”

“Okay, so how do you feel about it
now?”

“I think we should talk to Berkeley,”
Samuel replied. “I’m still suspicious of him, but he might just be telling the
truth.”

“When do you want to do that?” Hope
asked.

“His office hours end in about ten
minutes. If we go now, we can probably get him without risk of being
interrupted by other students of his.”

Eli’s door was open when they arrived. Samuel knocked, and Hope
stepped up next to him in the doorway. When Eli saw them, his eyebrows rose.

“Ah, come in, come in.” He gestured
to a couple of chairs near a small circular table. “Are you here to talk about
the class, or . . .”

Samuel
spoke. “Actually, we’ve come to ask you
about the Realms.” Considering how uncomfortable he had been about the topic
yesterday, he sounded confident, though Hope saw by the way his Adam’s apple
moved that he swallowed.

Eli
nodded. “All right. The Unconscious Realms
are a collection of worlds created by the collective unconscious---”

“Yeah, yeah,” Samuel interrupted. “Can
something that happens to you in the Realms affect you in real life?”

“Oh.” Eli met Samuel’s eyes. “Considering
that delving within them puts your conscious mind directly into contact with
the unconscious, where our psychological drives are synthesized and put into
action,” he took a breath, “yes.”

After
a moment of tense silence, Samuel sighed. “I’ll
participate in your experiment, for a little while.”

Hope
reined in the excitement that tried to grip her at these words. It wouldn’t be right to exult in something caused by another’s pain.
In a quiet voice, she said, “what happened?”

Samuel
looked absently at a stack of papers on Eli’s
desk. After a moment, he told them about what had happened the first few times
he had delved.

“The Trickster,” Eli mused, “disguised
as the Wise Old Man.”

“He called himself the Deceiver,”
Samuel said.

Eli
nodded. “And your fingers still feel
agitated where they touched the oil in this Serpent’s Gate?”

“Yes,” Samuel said.

Eli
turned and leaned onto his desk, sighing. “I’m
sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this. It was a mistake.”

“You’re damn right,” Samuel said,
narrowing his eyes, “and now I’m caught in this Deceiver’s trap. I have to get
out, so I need you to tell me how to find the Deceiver so I can get that
antidote from him.”

Hope
raised her hand toward him, as if to calm him, but she didn’t touch him.

“I understand how you feel,” Eli
said to Samuel, “but are you sure that’s wise?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

Eli
sighed, and then stood up. “All right,
but we should go to Shelley Hall, where there are facilities to take care of
you if you run into problems in the Realms. As you found out, delving can be
dangerous, and there may be times when you cannot wake up right away.”

When
the three of them arrived at Shelley Hall, they met Hattie and Skull in the
study lounge. Introductions were made, and Samuel shared his story again.

“The Trickster, huh?” Hattie said. “Sounds
like you might be in a bit of a pickle.”

“Deceiver,” Samuel said. “And what
would you know about him?”

Skull
spoke up. Hope wondered if he ever looked away from his laptop. “The Trickster---or Deceiver---is a well-known mythological
archetype. He has shown up as the Norse god Loki, the Serpent of Eden in the
Bible, and Anansi the Spider of West Africa, to name a few.”

“Hold on,” Samuel said. “Those are
myths. You’re not trying to tell me you believe they are actually true?”

“Ha! No, of course not,” Skull said.
“The point is that even though they come from different parts of the world,
they are all the same type of character, a trickster. Being human, we all have
this kind of character in our minds, pre-loaded from birth. That’s what an
archetype is.”

“So you’re saying the Deceiver
Samuel ran into is another one of these?” Hope asked.

Skull’s fingers stopped moving on his keyboard for a second. “No,”
he said, “this Deceiver is the original on whom all of the mythical characters
are based.”

The
room fell silent. Then, Skull resumed clicking his keyboard.

“What?” Hope gasped, as the meaning
of Skull’s words solidified in her mind.

“We’re talking about the Unconscious
Realms, remember?” Skull said. “They are the phenomenal manifestation of the
collective unconscious. So naturally you will find the archetypes themselves
walking around within them.”

“Wait a minute,” Hope said.
Something about that did not seem right, and she searched her brain, grasping
at threads of logic. “Carl Jung said that the mythological characters aren’t
themselves the archetypes, but just representations of them. Wouldn’t that make
the Deceiver not the actual archetype, but a---what did you call it---’phenomenal
manifestation’?”

Skull
turned, and Hope was taken aback by the image of his face. His head was tilted,
one eyebrow raised. One of his eyes was squinting, and his mouth was pressed
tightly together and slanted. Taken together, it looked like someone had
arranged his features just well enough so that they could be recognized as
human, and then left it without bothering to make sure everything was straight.
It was probably just his expression, but that didn’t make it any less weird. “I see a phenomenal manifestation
of you right now,” he said. “Does that make you not you?”

Hope
blinked twice, wondering when the conversation had gone over her head.

“Whatever the case,” Samuel said, “I
need to go in and find him. I don’t suppose you two would have any special
knowledge of the Realms that would be helpful?”

“Here.” Hattie slid a piece of paper
toward him on the table. On it was what looked to Hope like a snowflake, with
several branching lines that connected at the center. “Look for this symbol. It
represents the creation of knowledge from converging lines of thought and
perception. Find it, and you might find a clue for what to do next.”

“Really?” Samuel asked, scowling.
Hope understood his feeling. How was a symbol supposed to help?

“Hey,” Hattie said, “you two are the
only ones who can delve, so all that the rest of us have is theory. I can point
you to the books and academic papers on the subject, and you can take a few
months to learn it yourself, or you can trust us.”

“Fine,” Samuel said, “I guess I’m
ready.”

“Let’s get this party started,” Hope
said.

Samuel
looked at her. “You’re coming too?”

Hope
cringed. She was the one who had basically dragged him here, and he assumed she
was going to stay behind?

Eli
spoke up. “It might be dangerous to delve
alone, so you should always go together.”

Samuel
grunted in assent. “Come along, then.”

Everyone
except Skull made their way to the delving room. As Samuel sat on one of the
beds, Hattie thrust a clipboard toward him, along with a pen for his signature,
which he brushed away after a single glance. Soon, Hope was lying in her own
bed a few feet away from him, eyes closed. Then, she awoke again on the
familiar mossy hill. She wondered if she would ever get used to the shift
between body states that happened every time she delved or woke. Standing, she
took a deep breath of cool, spring air. She was finally here, ready, a whole
new world lying just out of sight.

“Well, let’s get going,” Samuel
said. Hope whirled to see him walking toward the road leading down the hill. As
she did, she caught sight of his right hand and gasped. No longer were the
black blotches confined to his first two fingertips, but they had spread down
his fingers and started creeping into the main part of his hand.

She
fell into stride next to him. “Does it
hurt?” she said softly.

“Hm?” He glanced at her. The dark
clouds over his face told her the answer before he spoke. “Like iodine on a
scraped knee.”

They
walked without speaking for a time, the only sound the rhythm of their
footsteps on the dirt road. After a while, Hope asked, “where are we going?”

“The Gate,” Samuel said. “Remember
how it disappeared when we took the stone with the fang symbol out of the slot?
There were plenty of other stones in the bin too. When that girl drew us that
symbol, it was the first thing I thought of.”

The
pieces came together. The rock at the end of this road must not actually be the
end of the road, but a split. Choose a stone, and a door appears to the realm
corresponding with its symbol. Of course, Hattie couldn’t have known about this. She had seemed confident, but all
she’d had to work with was theoretical psychology. Put that way, did Hattie see
Hope and Samuel as playing parts in a science experiment?

They
arrived at the end of the path, where dirt met a wall of stone. Without the
imposing presence of the black gate, it seemed rather ordinary. Wasting no
time, Samuel stepped up to the nook in the rock where the key stones were kept,
and rummaged through it. With a cry of success, he pulled out a smooth, round
rock, and placed it in a recess just above the nook. When he pulled his hand
away, Hope saw that the stone was indeed printed with the same symmetric symbol
that Hattie had drawn.

Three
chimes played in a delightful jingle, and the rock wall before them began to
glow, the brightness increasing until Hope could no longer make out the wall’s texture. As the glow faded, it revealed a door, white
like marble. Hope’s eyes roamed all over the carved stonework, unable to take
it all in fast enough. A raised impression of a Greek pavilion covered the
scene, with a lion on either side. Hovering above a pedestal in the center, the
snowflake pattern appeared, this version larger and with more branches. Seen
like this, it looked more like a road map than a snowflake.

In
synchronicity, Hope and Samuel reached forward and each grabbed one of the
carved handles. The doors swung slowly, yet easily, revealing a town lit by a
late afternoon sun, along with the smell of streets and the sound of bustle.
Stepping through onto brick paving, Hope felt a change in the air, in the
signature feel of the two joined places.

To
her great surprise, people walked around, chatted, visited stores and vendors,
and did other things, just like people in Reality. Were they all archetypes?
There seemed to be too many for that, and they did not appear to be acting out
archetypal roles. Could they be actual humans? Full-time delvers, or people who
somehow live exclusively in the Realms?

In
front of them, a girl looked up from behind a street table. She was about the
same age as Hope, with large blue eyes and curly blond hair. With an energetic
smile, she called out, “Welcome to Rome, where all roads
lead! How may I help you today?” The girl talked fast, gesturing all over and
bouncing around like she was going on several cups of espresso. “I can help you
find a hotel, recommend some great pasta joints---oh! and also there’s bowling,
and a library if you’re into that kind of stuff, and speaking of which there’s
also the creepy mansion on the hill. Oh I almost forgot! If you’re just passing
through, you can buy maps for your journey at a great dis---”

“Hold on,” Samuel said, holding his
hands outstretched as if to push her away. Hope silently thanked him, unsure
how long the girl would have gone on. “Why don’t we take things one at a time,
and cut out all the unnecessary stuff.”

“Let’s start with our names,” Hope
said.

“Splendid idea,” the girl said,
clapping her hands together. “I’m Belle, a town greeter, welcoming travelers
and providing a fountain of information, at your service!”

“Yes, we can see that,” Samuel
grumbled.

Hope
elbowed him. “It’s nice to meet you, Belle.” She
gave her their names. “We’re from Athens University, Indiana.”

“Indiana? I don’t think I know of
that realm, and that’s saying something considering my job.”

Hope
shared a glance with Samuel. “Uh, no,”
she said, “it’s not a realm, it’s a state.” Belle’s face showed no
comprehension. “In the U.S.” Still no reaction. Hope lifted her eyebrows. “Planet
Earth?”

Words
began to tumble from Belle’s mouth
even faster than before. “I’ve never met a delver before. What is Earth like?
Does everyone really hunt dragons and take their treasure? How do you feed---”

“Wait, hold it!” Samuel shouted.
Hope didn’t blame him, but his volume might have been just the tiniest bit
excessive. “For a greeter, you sure aren’t easy to have a conversation with.”

The
girl quieted down, nearly hyperventilating from talking so fast. “Sorry, I got carried away. Anyway, you probably want to
find the beacon. You do know what beacons are, right?”

Hope
exchanged a glance with Samuel, and then the two of them shook their heads.

“In that case, let me enlighten you.
When you delve from Earth, you always come back to the latest beacon you’ve set
as home. You should always set home to every beacon you come across so you don’t
have to go back through places you’ve already been before. It’s a must-do for
delvers. The one here in Rome is just down the street. Take a right at the
bakery, and eventually you’ll get to the plaza. The beacon itself is a giant
obelisk; you can’t miss it. Just touch it, and it will be set as your home.”
She clapped her hands together and rubbed them vigorously. “Oh, this is so
exciting, I’ve never gotten to say that before!”

“That’s great and all,” Samuel cut
in, “but there’s something really important I need to ask.”

“Ask away,” Belle said. “Anything
you want, I can help you with.”

“I need to find the Deceiver. I’ve
got a score to settle with him.”

The
smile vanished from Belle’s face. Her head darted to either
side like a frightened chipmunk, and then she vaulted over the desk, leaning in
toward Samuel so closely that he had to recoil. “We don’t say that name around
here,” she hissed.

“But I must find him,” Samuel said,
pushing her away with a finger to her collarbone. “He has something I need.”

“No, no, you don’t go searching for
that beast,” Belle whispered. “He is bad news. He lies and tricks you and
always comes out on top.”

“But he already---”

“That doesn’t matter! If he’s gotten
the best of you, just take your loss and run away, because if you don’t, he’ll
get you even worse.”

“I don’t have any other option,”
Samuel said, holding up his right hand, showing the black splotches defacing
his fingers, “unless you know of another way to get rid of this.”

Belle
looked at the stain for a moment, then without a word walked back around her
table. “You could try old man Isaac, the
alchemist,” she said without expression. “His workshop is just past the plaza,
and he can cure all kinds of stuff. Wounds, sicknesses, infections, you name
it.” She shook her finger. “But don’t mention you-know-who.”

Samuel
dropped his hand to his side and wiggled his infected fingers. Hope guessed he
was subconsciously trying to alleviate his discomfort. Then he looked at her
and nodded his head in the direction Belle had pointed. As soon as they were
out of earshot, she heard him mutter, “Alchemist,
huh?”

The
plaza was small and inviting, paved with brick like everywhere else. In the
center stood a light gray, almost white obelisk, which must have been the
beacon Belle had described. It was about a foot wide at eye level, and a good
deal taller than Hope. At the top, a white flame burned under a pyramidal cap.
Hope followed Samuel around a bench and a plot of flowers to get a closer look.

“She said to touch it, right?” Hope
said, lifting her hand toward the beacon a little.

“I think so,” Samuel replied,
looking the obelisk up and down, then taking a peek around the side. “But
where? Just anywhere?” He reached forward and touched three fingertips against
the stone, and then looked up quickly as if he had heard something. His eyes
widened and he took a quick breath in.

“What is it?” Hope asked, looking up
at the flame. Was he startled just because it was white? That was certainly
unusual, but not shocking.

Samuel
glanced at her for a moment, and then pointed upward. “It changed color.”

Hope
curled her tongue in puzzlement. She was sure it had been white when they had
arrived. Almost absentmindedly, she reached forward to lean her own hand on the
obelisk, and jumped when there was a sound like a sudden rush of air. At the
top, the flame turned green.

“What?” Samuel asked. Hope glanced
at him to find him looking at her with as curious expression. It was as if he
had not noticed what had happened. Just like . . . Just like when he had first
touched it, and Hope had noticed nothing. An idea crept into her mind. “I
think,” she said slowly, “you saw it change color when you touched it, and I
saw it change color when I touched it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. There are different
rules in the Realms than in Reality. Might it be possible that you and I
perceive some things differently?”

Samuel
said nothing for a moment, looking to the right and upward, thinking. Then he
nodded. “Could be. Anyway, let’s go find
this alchemist.”

“Already? Don’t you want to test out
the beacon first? Belle said it would let us return here, right? So let’s wake
up and come back, and see if we spawn here.”

Samuel
waved his hand, scanning the signs on the buildings. “A waste of time.”

Hope
blinked. “What?”

“If you’re wrong, and we’re put back
at the ruins again, we’ll have to walk all the way back here. Better to just do
what we came for.”

Hope
was stunned. “But come on,” she said. “You still
only care about healing yourself? After all we’ve found and the promise of so
many secrets to be discovered, none of that means anything to you?”

“Split up? But isn’t the whole
reason we came here together because Eli said it could be dangerous?”

“Berkeley doesn’t need to know.”

Hope
pushed. “But remember the first time you
decided to talk to a stranger here? How did that turn out?”

Samuel
finally looked at her, his face darkening. “Look,
just go and have fun with your diversions for awhile. We can meet up again here
in half an hour.” He turned and headed toward the street opposite the one they
had come from.

Hope
watched him go, feeling like walls were closing in around her. Should she go
with him, as Eli would want? If she did, and the alchemist could cure him, then
would he agree to join her, or would he just walk away, and she be back to
analyzing books and papers with Hattie and Skull?

“Lovers’ quarrel?” Hope turned at
the sound to see a head of blond curls grinning at her, sitting on the back of
a bench with an arm wrapped around a lamp pole.

“We’re not like that.”

“Aw, too bad,” Belle said. “You two
would be so cute together.”

Hope
felt the right side of her face contract, her eye squinting, the corner of her
mouth rising toward it. “I really don’t think you know what
you’re talking about.” She changed the subject. “What are you doing here? Aren’t
you supposed to be welcoming people by the gate?”

“I had Tommy take over for me,”
Belle said, hopping down and walking toward her. “I just couldn’t pass up the
chance to see more of you delvers. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“Well I guess I’m free,” Hope said. “Got
anything interesting to do?”

A
glint appeared in Belle’s eye. “I have just the thing.
There’s this door in the library that’s locked behind some kind of secret code.
No one in town knows what is behind it, not even the old people. So come on,
let’s check it out.”

A
secret door? That was definitely intriguing. Belle led the way, chattering
about things that had happened on this street or that corner. They arrived at
the library, a brick building with a large, oak door.Inside, the smell of leather and old pages
permeated the air, and the light from tall, thin windows illuminated brown
decor. Rows of shelves were piled with books up to the ceiling. Hope pointed up
to one of the topmost. “What kind of books are stored up
there, where no one can reach them?”

“Weird.” Belle led Hope down a
flight of stairs into a dark basement, opening the shutter of a lamp on the
wall so it gave light. “Here we are!”

The
room had more bookshelves, their contents covered in dust. A few boxes sat in one
corner. On the far side of the room was a large, arched door, with sixteen
squares set into it in a grid.

“The door of mystery,” Belle said,
in a dramatic whisper. “It is said that this door can only be opened by a
delver. Many travelers and townspeople have tried, but none have ever solved
the puzzle.”

As
Hope approached, she noticed that each of the squares had a word written in it.
She read a few of them. Venus, Neptune, Jupiter . . . The planets of the solar system.

Belle
spoke from behind her. “It’s a combination, or so everyone
thinks. You have to press them all in the right order, and then lock it in with
the one in the corner.”

Hope
looked, and sure enough, the square in the lower right corner had a circle in
it instead of a word. The two squares adjacent to it were blank. “I assume just going in order doesn’t work?”

“In order?”

Hope
looked behind her and found Belle genuinely puzzled. Understanding dawned on
her. “Here in the realms, you don’t know
about the planets, do you?”

Her
guess was confirmed when Belle tipped her head to the side and said, “Planets?”

“Yeah, there are eight of them in
the solar system. Earth is the third one from the sun.”

“Earth is . . . so these planets,
are they like realms for Reality?”

Realms
for reality? The thought was strange, but a lot of science fiction did portray
them not too dissimilarly to that. “Not
really, but kind of, I guess.”

“So then. Does that mean you can
actually do it?”

“Yeah,” Hope turned back to the
door. “I think it does.” She started pressing the panels, which, with a click, sank a few millimeters into the door. Mercury, Venus---her hand hovered over one of the squares. It read, Vulcan. That wasn’t one of the planets, at least not a real one. Suspicious,
she looked over the rest, and found three other imposters, Nemesis, Nibiru,
and Mobius. Could she be wrong about
the solution? Well, there was nothing to do but try. She pressed the real
planets in order, pausing at Pluto, and then deciding to go with just eight. If
this did not work, she could easily try again.

When
she pressed the confirmation panel, the sound of sliding metal emanated from
the door. Perhaps it was a bolt unlocking. She held her breath, heart pounding,
as she lay her hands on the door and pushed. It moved, swinging open. Beside
her, Belle squealed in excitement.

As
the room beyond came into view, a lone desk was revealed, bearing a lit lamp
and a single thin book. Hope approached, lifting it in her hand. It had no
writing on the outside, so she opened its leather cover, and found hand-drawn
images and chunks of script to go with them. She started reading from the top,
above the snowflake symbol of Rome. Dear
reader: it said, However fate’s hand has
called you, whether you see yourself as chosen or cursed, your journey begins
here.

On
the next page, the words, Seek the Sage.
appeared over a yin-yang. Beneath a pictograph of a lit torch, read, Follow the light, let it be your guide.

“So this wants you to follow a trail
through the Realms,” Belle said, reading over her shoulder.

“What do you mean?” Hope asked.

“Look, it says ‘follow the light.’”
Belle pointed to the torch. “This is a realm symbol, probably the one for where
this Sage lives. That means there’s a chain of realms between here and there.
Each one has this torch symbol carved somewhere, and if you find it, a gateway
will open to the next realm.”

“Is that so?” Hope said quietly.
This was exactly the kind of treasure she had hoped to find in the Realms. No,
this was better than the aesthetic wonders and physical oddities she had
imagined. This was a quest, a purpose, an open-armed sign that she was welcome
here. Now if only she could think of a way to get Samuel on board.

“And would you look at that,” Belle
said, pointing to the desk. “The first torch is right here.”

Sure
enough, etched into the desk’s surface
was the same pictograph as she had seen in the journal. As soon as she
recognized it, a noise like an electric bolt shattered the stillness, and she
turned to see a hole opening in the wall, leading to an autumnal scene, with
yellow and red maple leaves blowing about in a steady gust of wind. The portal
widened until it was the size of a doorway.

“Ooh,” Belle said, “I don’t know
this place.”

“So this portal appeared because we
saw the symbol on the table?”

“Yep-a-doodle.”

Hope
took a step toward the opening, drawn to the scene beyond. If she stepped
through, would the portal disappear, stranding her on the other side? She took
another step, and, without thinking, placed her hand on the portal’s edge. It felt warm. Suddenly worried, she jerked her hand
away. It might be infinitesimally thin and slice through her. In almost-panic,
she scanned her palm for any hint of blood or abrasion, and when she found
nothing, she sighed in relief. It looked like the edge of the portal was safe
to touch.

With
that worry out of the way, her attention turned back to the woods. They
beckoned her, so close that she merely needed to step forward and she would be
there. Of course, she should wait for Samuel, to be safe. Still, just a few
minutes, just a peek; surely that couldn’t
hurt, could it?

Hope
looked over at Belle. “Want to check it out?”

“Dying to,” Belle said, “but it’s
not meant for me.”

“Oh come on. Just because whoever
wrote this book intended it for a delver doesn’t mean you can’t take a peek.”

Belle
shook her head. “No, I can’t. That would be a bad
idea.”

“How could it possibly make a
difference whether the person who walks through is from here or Reality?”

“There are plenty of ways.” Belle
drilled Hope with a stare. “I don’t know if it’s because you’re from Earth or
if you’re just crazy, because everybody knows this.”

“Well I don’t,” Hope replied,
putting her hands on her hips, “so explain it to me.”

Belle
looked up at the ceiling, her mouth moving as if she were chewing a lump of
especially tough caramel. “How do I
explain something so basic?” She rubbed her eye with a finger and rolled her
head. “You know how when you’re two and your mom tells you not to go to the
park on Thursdays, but you go anyway, and you’re twirling yourself around on
the jungle gym, but then you fall and get hurt and start to cry, and there’s a
wood chip stuck in your hand, and then some scary men show up with sunglasses
and let loose their dogs on you and you run all the way back to your mom
crying? It’s like that.”

Hope
raised her eyebrows. “Um, what does that have to do with
anything?”

“Don’t you see? If you had gone on a
day other than Thursday, none of that would have happened.”

Hope
desperately tried to make sense of what the other girl was saying. “So, are you telling me you’re superstitious?”

“I don’t know what that means. I’m
telling you that if you do things you’re not supposed to, bad things happen.”

“Yep, that’s superstition.”

Belle
stuck out her lip. “Well if you already knew about it,
why did you act like you didn’t?”

“That’s, well . . .” Hope couldn’t
just tell Belle she was being silly. That wouldn’t solve anything. If she was
scared, Hope couldn’t force her to come along. Besides, there were plenty of
ways she had already seen in which the Realms differed from Reality; maybe here
some superstitions were real. She sighed inwardly and smiled. “I guess we
should go see how Samuel is doing.”

She
turned toward the door, but Belle stopped her. “Instead
of walking, why don’t you try out the beacon?”

“Oh right.” Hope felt her spirits
perk up a little, remembering she still had that new experience to try.

“Wait a minute before you come back,”
Belle said, “so that I can get to the beacon and see you return.”

“All right.” Hope smiled at her and
raised her hand to her third eye. Just like that, she was back in the delving
room in Shelley Hall.

When
she returned, instead of feeling earthy ground beneath her back, she felt a
hard, rough texture, and the sensation of being upright. Opening her eyes, she
found she was in Rome Plaza, leaning against the beacon.

“That was amazing!” Belle cried,
standing nearby. “There was nothing, and then poof, you were there!”

Hope
smiled as she found her footing. These beacons would turn out to be very
useful. She turned her attention to Samuel, who stood next to Belle, looking
grim. Softening her satisfaction to sympathy, she said, “didn’t go well with the alchemist?”

Samuel
raised his hand, the blackness still there. “I
swear that man is hiding something from me. He kept dodging the topic and
trying to get rid of me.”

“You didn’t . . .” Belle said,
trailing off.

Samuel
looked at her with a tired expression. “Didn’t
what?”

“You did, didn’t you? I told you not
to mention that name!”

“Who, the Decei---mbth!”
He was cut off as Belle’s hand clamped over his mouth. He shoved her shoulders
and she stumbled away from him. “Hand’s off! Don’t you understand the concept
of personal space?”

“Samuel,” Hope said. “We found
something you might like to take a look at while you were gone.” Hopefully a
change of subject would calm him down. “Belle, did you bring the book?”

Belle
pointed at her. “No, you brought it.”

Hope
looked down to find the book in her hand. “How
. . .”

“Why are you acting all confused?
You took it with you back to Earth.”

“But you can’t take objects from the
Realms to Earth. How would that even make sense?” Almost before she finished
asking, a possible answer came to her. “Maybe whenever youreturn to the Realms, you keep whatever you
were carrying when you left.” She handed the book to Samuel. “Anyway, here.”

Samuel
opened it and started reading. Keeping his first two infected fingers in the
air, he used his third and fourth fingers to flip a page, and then another, and
another. “What am I looking for?”

Hope
felt her optimism sinking away. “Isn’t
it intriguing?”

Samuel
paused, his fingers beneath the corner of the next page. “As far as I can see, it’s just another diversion. Another
waste of time.”

Hope’s heart sank. So much for hoping Samuel would agree to go
on an adventure with her. Maybe Eli would find another delver to go with her,
or she could convince him to let her go alone. Heck, if it came down to it, she
might just delve in secret. She didn’t feel good about the thought of going
behind his back, but the mystery of the book was too tantalizing to leave
alone.

Samuel
moved to hand the book back to her, flipping over the next page, completing the
motion he had paused in the middle of. Before she could grab it, he stopped,
his eyebrows rising, and brought the book back closer to himself.

Hope
stepped forward. “What is it?” When she got to where
the page came into view, she saw a pair of inverted triangles like snake fangs.
The text accompanying it read, Beware the Serpent’s Fangs. It’s
poison will corrupt you, causing you to wither away. But fear not, for
salvation lies along your journey.

“This is the symbol on the stone
that made the Serpent’s Gate appear,” Samuel said. He turned his eyes toward
her and, for the first time she had seen, he smiled. “It looks like this book
turned out to be useful after all.”

“Does this mean you’ll go on this
quest with me?” Hope said. After all her effort, it almost felt too good to be
true.

Samuel
nodded.

“Off to a happy start!” Belle cried,
slicing through the moment. “Best of luck on your journey! May you find a great
destiny and healing and love and all that special stuff. I’ve gotta go now. I
said I’d be back to the greeting booth in twenty minutes, and it’s been more
like twenty-three, so ta-ta.”

“See ya,” Hope said.

Samuel
put his hand up in a quick wave, somewhat limp with lack of enthusiasm.

When
Belle was gone, Hope explained how the torch symbols would create portals to
the next part of their journey, and how she and Belle had found the first one.

Samuel
nodded thoughtfully. “It looks like we’ll be spending
quite a bit of time here in the Realms. In that case, we should plan a time to
get together and delve. Once a week for two hours at a time might be good for
starters, and we can adjust from there if need be.”

“How about right now?” Hope asked,
pushing her luck.

“No, it will be supper time soon,
and we don’t know how long it will be until we find the next beacon. We should
start fresh.”

A
tide of emotion swept through her. On the upsurge came a froth of excitement,
leaving a simmering residue as it receded, waiting to be cooked into maturity.
Grateful for the wondrous and mysterious things she had seen today, imagining
the adventures that lay ahead, she knew the wait and worry had been worth it.
Looking at Samuel and smiling, she said, “okay.”

Author

About

I love to think about the universe, life, humanity, and all kinds of things. I love exploring ideas through science, art, literature, and philosophy. I am a graduate student of gravitational wave astr.. more..